To accommodate a larger patient flow, the health facility now has a second scanner. And by the end of the year, a 6D table that can move in the space of the linear accelerator and place patients in any position determined during the radiation treatment should be operational.
It will be used for patients undergoing complex high-tech radiotherapy – radiosurgery, intensity modulation or volume modulated arc therapy. “The 6D table helps to very precisely simulate the position of the patient, which is planned on the scanner before the linear accelerator”, explained Dr. Petko Dochev, who is the head of the Radiation Therapy Department at the Medical Center – Burgas. The value of the table is about BGN 700,000. It will be the only one in the region, and there are only three similar in the country – in Varna, Sofia and Panagyurishte.
“We are the fourth to have a 6D table. After it, we hope to implement the ABC system, which compensates for the movement of the internal organs during breathing during scanning, so that no deviations occur,” said Dr. Dochev. He noted that the new CT scanner has greatly eased the team’s work. “In just one week, 20 patients have gone through the CT scanner for radiation treatment planning.
It relieves the workload of the department, because until now Oncoto had one scanner, which was used for both diagnosis and planning. However, this turned out to be a difficult task after the introduction of the second linear accelerator, when the number of patients increased sharply to 100-120 per month”, explained Dr. Dochev. The new CT scanner has an important advantage – a larger gantry (the opening through which patients pass). The old one was only 65cm wide. in diameter, and the new one is 90 cm. A large number of patients must be scanned with precisely defined immobilization – boards, etc., so that they do not move. This increases the volume that must pass through the gentry.
Too often some patients couldn’t get in and get scheduled. Now that is a thing of the past. “With the new machine, whatever immobilization is used is not a problem and scanning patients is easy. You know that we have been doing radiosurgery for a year and a half, complex immobilizations are imposed on the patient, during which he must not move even a millimeter to the side”, explains the specialist.
